Burst and bubbles speech

Kia ora and talofa. My name is Amy Tofa and I am the Year 7&8 teacher at Glenbrae School. Being a bookworm myself, I have in my career encouraged my students to read and enjoy reading. Therefore, when I was given the role of CoL within school, I had already decided my inquiry would be around achievement challenge 3. 

My inquiry question is, Will daily deep diving into quality, ‘multimodal’ texts, accompanied by ’rich’ text conversations in which all participate, and with deliberate attention to words that co-occur to carry meaning, improve students’ reading comprehension and encourage their love of reading?

Throughout this year, my class and I have been on a journey of exploring texts, deep diving (really unpacking texts), having discussions about reading materials where we share our pearls of wisdom with each other and growing together in learning and as individuals. During our reading sessions we have focussed a lot on vocabulary and strategies we can use to try and understand the meaning of words we are not familiar with. 

The format of our reading sessions were tweaked throughout the year. From having three rotating reading groups around the teacher to empowering students to lead their discussions about reading materials after scaffolding from the teacher. I often reflected on the lifting of the reading achievement for all students with a particular focus on boys part of the achievement challenge because the girls were often dominating the discussions.

However through my google form surveys I was pleasantly surprised to see some of the boys response about their attitudes to reading discussions changing because they enjoyed listening and sharing their ideas. 

This of course is also a result of building a classroom culture of inclusiveness and respect for all and in Jannie’s words “Everyone has something to share. We are all part of this vessel”.

My inquiry in action:

• The use of Multimodal texts
• Current events discussions every morning on a daily basis. A great way to start the day and it has encouraged the students to learn more about what is happening around New Zealand and the world. At present we are currently discussing climate change and pollution on our planet earth. An issue my students are very concerned about.
• Novel reading - every day after lunch. 
• Guided reading - which is a sacred time for us because we really enjoy having rich discussions and exploring texts as a group and at times as a class. Focusing on chain linking ideas in discussions. This was Jannie introduced in our class at the beginning of this year. We built on chain linking our ideas in discussions throughout the year and have witnessed how valuable it is. 
• Rich discussions about vocabulary. Exploring how words carry meaning for different purposes and building our vocabulary bank. 
• Blogging our learning and sharing our create work with the world.
• Sharing reading materials with whanau
• More awareness of authors - students are more confident in discussing who their favourite authors and books they have read by different authors.

Moving forward

Continue with what I have started this year. I would like to put more effort into reading with whanau and also more focus on our blogging and commenting. 

I would also like to put a lot of focus on the create part of the Learn, Create, Share pedagogy of Manaiakalani. After much reflection I feel this is the area I am steering my inquiry towards for 2020. 

Challenges/learning surprises 

Student voice in giving direction about what they wanted to read.  “Miss we have been reading so much non fiction can we read some fiction now?”

Ongoing challenge of engaging whanau with the tamariki’s learning